Chiara Dynys: Insidious Beauty
The works of Chiara Dynys never anticipate a distant and passive viewer; rather, they stimulate the individual, drawing him into experiences of subtle disorientation.
Here we find mirrors in which we cannot see our reflected image, but if we do see it, we visualize ourselves imprisoned between the iron bars of a cage. Here we find images framed in elegant formats, which nevertheless disappear depending on the refraction of the light and the very movement of our body. Here we find that words always have a double meaning, always playing with the coexistence of opposite meanings but dramatically equivalent.
As soon as the viewer approaches the work, the artist imposes a kind of restraint on his glance and expectations.
Daughter of an era that rejects manual skill as a limitation, Dynys has always designed the very hi-tech pieces, delegating their manufacture to specialized artisans and technicians, who breathe life into the pieces under the supervision of the artist, but without her active participation. As a result, works arise that appear to walk the line between art and design, where elegance is never secondary.
In fact, it is through this aperture that the artist suggests a reflection on beauty and its role in the world in which we live.
Certainly, “classic” beauty, which emphasizes harmony as an attribute, is no longer conceivable in such a tragically discordant world. Our contemporary conscience leads us to believe that the peaceful and cathartic harmony promised by beauty has for some time been revealed as mystification: beauty thus conceived contributes to masking the contradictions of the real world.
It is no accident that since the historic Avant-Garde movements, artists have resisted representing “the beautiful.” On the other hand, they use it to reveal what this concept hides; such is the case with Chiara Dynys.
Her technically well-achieved pieces are furthermore conceptually deceptive. They do not hide; instead, they reveal a contradiction. They function like perceptive and mental traps. At first, they appear captivating, but then they reveal themselves to be disturbing due to their direct allusion to the reality, not always pretty, in which we live.
– Giorgio Verzotti